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EVGA P55 FTW Motherboard Review

As with any new processor release, the big manufacturers are always sure to get their boards out to the public in record fashion. This can lead to boards that feel rushed in design and just don’t seem to offer much in the way of outstanding performance with eye catching features. Though this has seemed to be the philosophy for many manufacturers, there is one that always seems to get out their best boards quickly and manage to just wow anyone and everyone. Nobody can deny the proven performance that comes from the EVGA camp. The EVGA P55 FTW motherboard is part of the For The Win series that we have all come to know and respect. The EVGA P55 FTW brings to the table an excellent feature set with proven performance to back it up. Full support of 2 way SLI, overclocking control panel support, onboard CMOS reset, triple BIOS, and full energy conserving 12 phase power design all demonstrate the level of quality and features we have come to know and respect from EVGA and the FTW series of hardware.

AVIVO PureVideo HD DXVA GPU Acceleration Guide

HTPCs and HD content are growing more and more around the GPU industry. ATI and NVIDIA have been working on technologies to playback and enhance this video content for many years. NVIDIA started working on their Purevideo technology and added the Purevideo HD some time ago. ATI on the other hand, has their own AVIVO technology and as it was obvious, they name their latest technology AVIVO HD. Now, while these technologies have been marketed too much, I´ve noticed that the big consumers majority doesn´t even know how to use them. The real problem is that neither NVIDIA nor ATI have done enough to help people use their technology. They can bombard you with so many pictures, images and text but neither of these things will offer a simple guide on how to use the software tools in the real world. Here at Benchmark Reviews, we will teach you how to use your GPU to pla! yback and enhance HD video content, and we´re not limited to DVD or Blu-ray content, because we´ll also address *.mkv files so that you can enjoy your stored multimedia. There is so much content available for download from Internet which can be reproduced without using your CPU, that it makes good sense to enhance the image quality whenever possible. Please, have a read at our AVIVO-HD PureVideo-HD DXVA GPU Acceleration Guide and enjoy the Full High Definition experience as it was meant to be!

Intel DP55WG Review

For most consumers, Intel might not be the first name to come to mind when building a new PC, but the company offers a rather robust line-up of boards for each chipset it releases. We’re looking at the $140 “mainstream” DP55WG, which has an simple overall feature-set, but includes support for IR and also NVIDIA’s SLI.

Silverstone ST1500 1500W Power Supply Review

In the time I’ve been reviewing power supplies here at jonnyGURU.com, I’ve tested big power supplies, little power supplies, and just about every power supply in between. Until today, I’ve never gone looking to completely max out my testing equipment. But that’s about to change. Dear readers, I give you one of only two power supplies currently on the North American market capable of over 1500 watts of output. I give you the Silverstone Strider Series ST1500.

Lian Li PC B25F Review

Lian Li are well known for their flush designed cases, with smooth elegant styling and high construction values. Once again we have one that seems to tick all the boxes at first look, but will it live up to our testing? The B25F on the surface seems pretty standard Lian Li, but it comes with some interesting features that should peak the interest of more than a few.

Titan Fenrir CPU Cooler Review

Do you have one of the new i7 or i5 processors yet? You do? I guess you’re probably going to overclock it too. That’s why you bought it, right? Our next review sample, the Titan Fenrir, is ready to take your air cooling on head first. “But, wait. Who is Titan? What is the Fenrir?,” you ask. Titan is a new kid on the cooling block and they’ve been making some noise with the performance on their Flagship Cooler, Fenrir. Taking its name after the Norse demi-god wolf who bit the hand off the God Tyr, the Fenrir has turned out to be quite the cooler among some air cooling enthusiast circles.

VIZO Arius II Review

An external hard drive is great if you’re looking for something to interchange between computers, but what if you’re looking for a more permanent solution to your 2.5″ hard drive problems? Sure, you can take a dock with you pretty much anywhere you go, but it is another piece of equipment to worry about, and at times you may find your LAN bag about to bust open the way it is. Regardless of the reason, making the jump to an internal SATA rack is a reasonable option, but how and where do you start? VIZO has offered us an answer with their 2.5″ hard drive rack from the Arius line, the Arius II.

CiragoTV Mini USB Media Player CTM1000

Today for review I’ve got a great little product from Cirago called the CiragoTV Mini. It’s a USB Media player that’s small in size but yet big in features. The unit is a very small box, about 3 inches by 3 inches in size and less that an inch thick, it comes with it’s own small power supply and a small remote as well. The CiragoTV Mini has the ability to access USB flash drives, USB hard drive and several types of memory cards with outputs for HDMI and even standard composite audio and video. With the CiragoTV Mini you can access several types of files, the most popular video and audio formats, along with pictures as well to show them on your TV for your viewing pleasure. It’s small enough to take with you if you want to, you can easily grab a 2.5” hard drive and the CiragoTV Mini and take it to your friends house, or even use it for work presentations if need be. So continue on for a look at a very innovative and an overall great little product…

EVGA GeForce GT 240 SuperClocked Video Card Review

The GeForce GT 220 video card’s 48 processing cores do not really provide enough horse power to play today’s popular game titles with some of the eye candy turned on. With twice as many stream processors the EVGA GeForce GT 240 SuperClocked video card is able to better play games and our testing showed that in certain scenarios this video card can nearly double the performance of the GeForce GT 220. If you don’t use anti-aliasing and use resolutions of 1280×1024 or 1440×900 for gaming then this card is a very good choice. For those looking for a budget graphics card that is overclocking friendly, we found this retail boxed card to overclock very well. Overclocking core from 550MHz to 665MHz and the stream processors from 1340MHz to 1810MHz was a much higher overclock than what we expected, but we’ll take it and run. For a single slot graphics card these are very impressive numbers and the 400+ MHz increase we got on the stream processors is what really made a noticeable difference in games and applications. If you happen to be running applications like F@H you know how big of a performance difference this overclock will make!